NASA reports 2010 hottest year on record so far.

Last month, NASA reported it was the hottest January-September on record. That followed a terrific analysis, “July 2010 — What Global Warming Looks Like,” which noted that 2010 is “likely” to be warmest year on record.

It now seems pretty certain 2010 will outpace 1998, which currently ties for fourth hottest year in the NASA dataset (though it is technically described by NASA folks as tied for the second hottest year with 2005 and 2007).

Outpacing 2005, the hottest year on record, will be closer. In NASA’s surface-based dataset, we are unlikely to set the record monthly temperatures for the rest of this year; last month wasn’t close to the hottest October for NASA, though it was third warmest. We have entered a moderate to strong La Niña, which NOAA says is “expected to last at least through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2010-11.” That said, as you can see, the October anomaly (deviation from the 1951-1980 average) was higher than September, in spite of the La Niña.

For what it’s worth, here’s the latest UAH data, which, at least until it’s ‘adjusted’, shows what appears to be the warmest early November on record:

UPDATE: Michael in the comments directs us to this map of recent temperature anomalies from NOAA, which shows remarkably warm temperatures over much of Northern Hemisphere:

Finally, it bears repeating that the record warmth we are seeing this year is all the more powerful evidence of human-caused warming “because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect,” as a recent must-read NASA paper noted: